The Syrian foreign minister has warned that plans to create safe zone in the Arab country, proposed by the new US administration, would pose serious risks to civilians’ lives if enforced without coordination with Damascus.
Walid al-Muallem said Monday that any attempt to impose safe zones without coordination with the Syrian government will be an “unsafe act.”

Confirming that the US role in the Syrian conflict is likely to expand in the coming months, Reuters reported that the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State has supplied its Syrian allies with armored vehicles for the first time, expanding support since U.S. President Donald Trump came to office.
The armored vehicles and troop carriers had arrived four or five days ago, said Talal Silo, spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance, which includes the Kurdish YPG militia.

If you try to follow events in the mainstream media (MSM), you may have noticed that they routinely refer to Syrian president Bashar al Assad as a “brutal dictator”. Assad is supposed to have responded to peaceful protests with repressive violence and by “killing his own people”. The U.S., UK, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar continue to maintain that “Assad must go”.
I disagree with all of that, as I’ll explain in this article.

Watch Press TV’s full interview with Peter Ford, the former UK ambassador to Syria.
The interview, conducted on Press TV’s Face to Face program, was aired on January 28, 2017.